


Too Tight, This Skin I'm In

by mercurybard



Category: Bandom, Cobra Starship, The Academy Is...
Genre: Fire, M/M, Tour Bus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 09:52:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11506938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercurybard/pseuds/mercurybard
Summary: This whole night had been lame even before his own band kicked him off the bus.





	Too Tight, This Skin I'm In

William was snoring. Normally, that wasn’t a big deal since Gabe could just retreat to his own bus when Bill started making buzz saw noises, but Alex and Ryland were doing serious Ivy League stuff tonight and had banned him from his own frickin’ bus. Apparently, he was distracting.

***

_“Go play somewhere else for one night, please,” Alex begged as he spun Gabe around and hustled him down the stairs._

_“Nate’s still here—why the fuck aren’t you kicking Nate out?”_

_“Because Nate’s never streaked through a practice.”_

_“Oh, come on! It was for Buzznet!”_

_“Gabe, go! We just need some time to jam, me and Ryland. No Cobra stuff. Just one night, and don’t tell me you’re going to have trouble finding another place to sleep.”_

***

Alex was right about that—it was no problem crashing with William on the TAI bus. But he hadn’t been right about Gabe being a distraction. Shit, yeah, he liked to fuck around as much as the next guy, but when it came down to music, that’s what this (and he did a mental arm flail for emphasis) was all about! Watching two guys he played with take nothing and make it something concrete, spinning lyrics and melodies out of thin air.

His hands fisted in the sheets. 

Well, fuck this then. 

He rolled off William’s bunk, his feet hitting the floor with dull thumps. Somehow, he managed it without smacking into the other bunks or the wall or anything, and there was something so incredibly insane about that since he was a tall motherfucker and shouldn’t be able to just roll in such a small space without bumping into something. But his life was all about small spaces these days—squeezing in between people at hole-in-the-wall clubs, smashing into the band’s bus, wriggling around the mass amounts of people and equipment at venues. Come to think of it, the only place where he felt like he could stretch out was on stage. 

If that wasn’t why Bill had been taking those bat-shit crazy leaps off the Butcher’s kit lately, Gabe would eat his own hat. 

A memory of William flying across the stage, arms and legs pinwheeling madly, snuck into Gabe’s brain and a little thrill shot through him, low in his belly.

***

Chiz was sound asleep on the couch in the front lounge, one leg draped over the edge so it looked like he was about to slide right off. He might too, if the blanket he was lying on and gravity kept conspiring. One arm was across his stomach, clutching this absurd neon green stuffed dinosaur. Gabe could've sworn he saw Mike Carden’s latest female friend give it to Mike last week.

Speaking of females, there was one on the bus. Chiz was using her thigh as a pillow. She hadn’t been here earlier…or at least he was pretty sure she hadn’t been sitting there when he came through. She had the kind of legs he would have remembered—long and shapely and pale as fucking porcelain where he could see them. Where they weren’t encased in tall black boots with entirely too many buckles and striped tights that might possibly be (oh, god, yes, they were) thigh-highs, except the left was puddled around the top of her boot and the popped clips of her garter belt were dangling out the bottom of her dress.

She didn’t bother to look up—her head bent over a sketch pad—when he staggered in. Her tongue poked out of the corner of her mouth, small, pink, and wet. Fingertips stained with charcoal sort of twitched as she moved the pencil over the heavy paper. A line here, a smudge there. He stepped over Chiz’s foot and collapsed onto the couch on her far side, leaning in too close to see what she was drawing. “It’s…it’s good,” he breathed moistly on her neck, even though he hadn’t figured out what it was yet. There was a human being there, inside the lines and blocks of shading. A man. Yeah, a man, with skin that seemed to writhe even as she pinned him to the page with her pencil. 

“It’s not done yet,” she murmured and pushed her dark hair behind her ear, giving him a good look at her profile. It was a nice profile. “The Butcher needs to come back, so I can finish it.”

A second look, and now he could see the Butcher. It took looking at the blank spaces between the lines, and he wondered if this was how she saw everything, because to be able to look at the world like that would be fucking amazing. But the question that came out of him instead was lame because this whole night had been lame even before his own band kicked him off the bus. “Where’d he go?”

“The Wal-Mart to get a coffeemaker.”

His eyes flicked to what looked like a perfectly good coffeemaker sitting on the kitchenette counter, but he didn’t bother with the obvious. It was the Butcher; questions were usually pointless. Especially when the man himself came banging in the door a second later, another coffeemaker tucked under his arm. 

“Oh, hey, man,” the Butcher greeted him. “Coffeemaker for twelve bucks!” He plopped down on the floor with the box in between his legs and started tearing into it. “This is Shay—not her real name—and we’re having double-brew coffee.”

Gabe dragged a hand over his face and suddenly wondered if maybe sleep really was a possibility. But that would involve getting up and stepping over the Butcher and going back to Bill’s bed and—God knows—he could hear the snoring from here. “What?”

“Double-brew coffee. See, you make a pot of coffee, and then you make another pot of coffee, except for the second one, instead of using water, you use the first pot. Twice the caffeine.”

Shay licked a finger and used it to move some charcoal around on the paper-Butcher’s back. “It trashes the coffeemaker pretty quick. Did you really get that one for twelve dollars?”

“It was on sale.” 

There was definitely a headache blossoming in the back of Gabe’s skull, and while this not-Shay girl seemed okay with him draping himself over her like a throw over a couch, she wasn’t really paying attention to him, and that was starting to irk him…and the Butcher with the coffeemaker and Michael Guy Chislett with fucking Mike Carden’s green dinosaur.

***

Finally, it seemed worth it to move, so he did. Tripped over the Butcher on his way back to the bunk. William was flat on his back, arms and legs all akimbo, bent in directions that really should be impossible for a human being. The small DVD player they’d been using to watch _28 Days Later_ was shoved into the corner, whining faintly.

Gabe jabbed his finger in between two of Bill’s ribs. “Wake up, jerk.”

He came awake with a yelp, slapping away the hand sleepily. “Wha?”

“You fell asleep on me.”

William shoved his hair out of face, looking sleepy and sexy as hell. This had to be the Bill Gabe liked best—carelessly beautiful and slightly out of it. It was hard to believe this Bill was related to the flying squirrel who molested microphone stands on stage. Come to think of it, Gabe loved that Bill too. 

“So you try to disembowel me with your finger?”

“Your band’s bugging me.” He eased himself up into the bunk, sprawling on top of William. Propped his chin up on one hand and looked down. 

Bill had that squinty look he always got when the world dared to intrude on his rare moments of sleep. “They’re a nice band.” He squirmed a little, his belt buckle digging into Gabe’s stomach. “You’re heavy.” 

He didn’t say ‘get off’ though, so Gabe lowered his mouth to William’s in a kiss that was open and sloppy as hell. He tasted like Jack Daniels (which reminded some part of Gabe’s brain that wasn’t absorbed in the feel of the man pressed under him that there was a bottle somewhere in the bunk and rolling over on it would be a bad idea) and tasted familiar in a way Gabe couldn’t describe except to say he tasted like William. 

William, who gripped his chin with one long-fingered hand and maneuvered Gabe’s face so they fit better together and coaxed Gabe’s tongue into his mouth, sucking on it. William, whose other hand skimmed down his back before sliding under the waistband of his pants to cup Gabe’s ass.

Gabe tried to slip a hand between them, but all that did was make Bill break the kiss. “I thought we weren’t doing this anymore,” he whispered. 

“You have your hand on my ass.”

“It was reflex.”

Gabe snorted. “You just like my ass.”

“Well, that too.” He gave it a little squeeze, and Gabe answered it by grinding their hips together, belt buckle be damned. 

His jeans were too tight. He wanted them off, and he wanted Bill’s off, and he wanted Bill’s mouth around his cock, and he wanted… Fuck, he wanted a lot of things, so he hooked a leg around William and rolled them in the cramped confines of the bunk, so Bill was on top and Gabe could try and yank his t-shirt over his head. 

Bill just laughed and pressed his elbows tight to his sides, making it impossible for Gabe to lift the shirt higher than his ribs. “Seriously, I’m out of condoms, and you were the one who said we had to stop.”

Gabe moved to undo the button on William’s jeans but got his hands grabbed before he could even get there, Bill’s long, spider-leg fingers twining through his. 

“No, Gabe. You’re fucked up tonight, and I’m pretty drunk, and I’m not going to play this game again.”

***

The smoke detector went off.

When had the air gotten so fucking hazy? And how long had the bus smelled like burning couch? (And Gabe really did know what a burning couch smelled like…yes, he did, thanks to one eventful night involving Grey Goose back when he was with Midtown.)

The alarm had sent William flying, and the lithe singer crashed to the floor. “What the hell?” Or, at least that was what he tried to say—it came out more as a series of coughs. People were cussing from the front of the bus, but when Gabe shoved the curtain aside, all he could see was smoke. “Can’t go out that way,” William croaked as he grabbed onto Gabe’s belt and hauled him down to the floor next to him. 

For a brief second, all Gabe could feel was panic, sucking in a hasty breath that burned his lungs. Then, Bill tugged on his belt again, and they scrambled for the back lounge and the emergency exit windows there. He got hung up on the screen, but then he was out the window, his bare feet slapping the asphalt hard. He turned back and helped William down, his hands gripping the other man’s waist possessively. 

Outside was sheer chaos. People ran helter-skelter, yelling and screaming. Most of them were either in a panic to get away from the bus or get instruments out or move the other vehicles. A crowd had started to gather to watch the insanity. Flames were licking out the door and open windows, Gabe saw as the two of them backed away. 

His foot hit a curb, and he sat down hard, dragging Bill down with him. 

“Damn,” William murmured and leaned against him, melding into his side. 

After a few minutes, Vicky-T came by. “Oh, good, you’re alive,” she said, relief obvious in her eyes despite her flippant tone. She pulled a Smirnoff out of the box she was carrying and twisted the cap off before handing it to him. Kissing the top of his head, she wandered off again. 

He drank down half the raspberry flavored drink in one pull. The grass was wet and starting to soak into the seat of his jeans, but all Gabe could do was stare at the inferno in front of them. The skin of his face felt tight and warm. He knew they should be up and running around like everyone else, but he couldn’t make himself move.

At what point Nate came and sat down on his left was a little fuzzy, but the drummer tipped his head against Gabe’s arm. “I’m sorry we booted you off the bus.” He was wearing just pajama bottoms and flipflops, a blanket wrapped around him despite the warm night. 

Gabe slid the arm Nate was leaning against around him and pulled him closer. “It’s okay.”

Then Mike Carden moseyed up. “What the hell’d you do to my bus, Saporta?”

Suddenly, he felt that hard little knot in his chest that had been slowly tightening over the course of the evening disintegrate, and he could breathe again. Laughing, he tightened his arms around his drummer and William and just shook his head. “You want someone to blame, you should try the Butcher and his fucking twelve dollar coffeemaker.”


End file.
